El Lobo writes to mention a ComputerWorld article about
Microsoft's battles with the Hackers of the world. The software giant fights off more than 100,000 attacks every month, protecting their data-heavy internal network from the paws of your average script kiddie. The article discusses Microsoft's 'defense in depth' strategy, and discusses just some of the layers in that barrier. From the article:
"The first layer of protection for the Microsoft VPN is two-factor authentication. After an infamous incident in the fall of 2000, Microsoft installed a certificate-based Public Key Infrastructure and rolled out smart cards to all employees and contractors with remote access to the network and individuals with elevated access accounts such as domain administrators. Two-factor authentication requires that you have something physical, in this case the smart card, and also know something, in this case a password."